Florida's rushing attack, passing game wilts under LSU's pressure

October 12, 2013|By Matt Murschel, Orlando Sentinel

BATON ROUGE, La. — It was one step forward, three steps back for Florida's offense.

With an injured Matt Jones spending much of the afternoon watching from the sidelines and quarterback Tyler Murphy spending much of the afternoon scrambling for his life, the Gators offense took a major step backward as No. 10 LSU (6-1, 3-1 SEC) jumped out to a 14-3 halftime lead and held on for an ugly 17-6 win over No. 17 Florida (4-2, 3-1).

An offense that was already considered to be suspect wilted under the hot, glaring sun in the Louisiana Saturday afternoon.

"We moved the ball, but we gave up too many negative plays," a clearly frustrated Will Muschamp said following the loss. ". . . We gave up more negative plays today than we have probably all season combined."

"There's no question it's a huge concern as we move forward."

Florida's offense began the week next-to-last in the SEC in scoring offense (25 points per game) and 11th in the league in total offense (393.4 yards per game). Yet there were some signs of improvement. The Gators were averaging close to 200 yards per game on the ground and just a little over 200 yards per game through the air.

On this day though, Florida only managed 240 total yards of offense. It was the lowest offensive output since the Gators recorded 183 yards during a 44-11 win over South Carolina last season.

"It's really frustrating, but we just gotta improve," senior receiver Trey Burton said. "It seems like we've messed up twice this year on the same stuff. We just gotta find a way to get better."

The ground game accounted for 111 of the yards today despite being without the team's leading rusher in Jones, who injured his knee in the first quarter. His day was done after only four carries and 17 yards.

Mack Brown (56 yards) and Kelvin Taylor (52) took most of the carries in Jones' absence, but Florida's rushing game never fully took off.

Even Murphy, who was beginning to earn the admiration of Gator Nation, struggled against LSU's pressure defense.

"They did a good job applying pressure," Murphy said. "I didn't do a good job getting rid of the ball. That's something I'm just going to really have to evaluate and get better at because teams are going to do that all season."

The junior spent much of the afternoon trying to escape LSU's defensive front line, which appeared to manhandle Florida's offensive line on nearly every possession. Through the first five games of the season, the Gators' o-line had only allowed seven sacks, but on Saturday the Tigers sacked Murphy four times and disrupted the passing game most of the afternoon.

While he finished the day 15-of-27 passing for 115 yards, Murphy was nearly intercepted several times in the first half and did not appear to be on the same page with some of his receivers.

It was the first time since taking over the starting job on Sept. 21 that Murphy failed to throw for a touchdown and it was the first time since a 17-9 loss to Georgia last season that Florida didn't score a touchdown in a game.

Despite all of the negatives, Muschamp said he has faith in his quarterback heading into next week's SEC East battle with Missouri.

"Tyler's going to be fine," Muschamp added. "He's a mature young man, he's very intelligent. He has handled everything beautifully and he will continue to because of the type of person he is."